The man is on a roll!

So this morning I posted about having establishing my first "boulder problem". Well, only minutes after having published that blog I revisited a climbing area along the train tracks that run by the Winooski River, where there are a couple of established "lead climbs" (long climbs that are studded with bolts that you periodically attach your rope to as you ascend) and "top rope" climbs (long climbs where you anchor a rope to the top of the climb prior to climbing it).

I'd never heard of any boulder problems down there but I figured why not check it out - maybe there's a good boulder problem hidden there that no one has noticed yet (I say "hidden" because almost all rock is climbable, but a boulder problem exists by virtue of it benig a portion of rock that is exceedingly difficult to climb and can usually only be climbed in ONE way - it requires a specific sequence of movements).

So I'm looking around, climbing various areas, etc. when I stumble across this beauty:

The sequence follows straight up from the mat, and ends when you've climbed to the point where your feet have reached the level of the little green plant jutting out of the rock (the cliff itself goes higher than the picture shows).

Let's try and break it down!

The problem begins (as many boulder problems do) with your butt on the ground, and both hands on the rock. This is called a sit-start. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the sit start sequence, so we'll begin once I've pulled myself up onto the face of the rock and am about 2 "moves" deep.

So here I am a few moves into the sequence:

I hold strongly onto the right "crimp" hold (a "crimp" refers to a very short ledge that you grip with the tips of your fingers) and lift my right leg:

Now I focus my strength on locking the grip on my left hand and push on my footholds as I draw my right hand up to the next hold and then draw up my right leg:

This allows me to match my hands on the right hand hold (not picture) and then move my right hand over to the crack hold and shift my body over to compensate.

Then I thrust upward, pulling with my left hand and pushing with my right foot to a high right hand hold, and complete the last movements, which I unfortunately couldn't take any pictures of because I haven't figured out how to customize the timer on my camera yet. But you get the drift!